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It’s becoming something of a theme: Two massive companies are fighting to take over another massive company, in a deal that will enrich a variety of shareholders but leave the rest of us worse off.

The news that Netflix struck a bid to take over movie powerhouse Warner Bros. earlier this month likely horrified entertainment workers: Two Goliaths of the industry combining is no good for pay, job security, nor creativity. Workers at CNN, one Warner-owned product, though, had reason to rejoice. The Netflix deal doesn’t encompass CNN, unlike the proposition floated by Paramount to take over the entirety of the parent company’s subsidiaries.

CNN is hardly above reproach. But as it turns out, the news network — which recently teamed up with a gambling app that allows users to bet on whether Palestinians in Gaza will be ethnically cleansed — still has room to sink lower.

Days after the Netflix deal, Paramount announced it was launching a hostile takeover bid, appealing directly to Warner Bros. shareholders to overturn the decision of the company’s board. That bid, if it is successful, would put CNN in the hands of Paramount’s new owner, failed actor and son of a centibillionaire David Ellison, who has spent the last several months remaking CBS News in Donald Trump’s image. Under Ellison, CBS scrapped diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives while installing right-wing commentator Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief, much to the dismay of the network’s staff.

If Ellison gets his way, he could do the same at CNN, a move that would be welcomed by his most powerful ally: Trump himself. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison promised “sweeping changes” at CNN during a December visit with the president.

In a year in which crucial sources of journalism have shuttered and corporate consolidation has continued at hyperspeed, the potential fall of another news outlet to Trump already has media critics concerned about the future of the free press. Journalism in the U.S. has already been subject to a process of death by a thousand cuts; the Ellison takeover streak is simply the latest slice.

Big Tech and Billionaires

Ellison family members have made headlines over the last year for their more direct foray into media. Having already taken over Paramount in August, the Ellison family is now set to get its fingers on TikTok too: Oracle, owned by David’s father Larry, has been tapped to take over TikTok’s U.S. operations, including its algorithm, once sale of the app is finalized.

The wealthiest people in the U.S. have all long understood that placing a hand on the media scale can yield big payoffs … and they’re regularly finding new ways to poison public discourse with their tech.

But these moves are nothing new; the wealthiest people in the U.S. have all long understood that placing a hand on the media scale can yield big payoffs, whether that comes from owning a media outlet or a tech platform that serves as a means of distribution. And they’re regularly finding new ways to poison public discourse with their tech.

Elon Musk, who is worth $428 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg, worth $253 billion, currently sandwich Larry Ellison for the top three spots on the Forbes list of the richest people in the United States; both also sit atop social media empires whose algorithms are known for pushing users toward the right — with Musk’s AI chatbot Grok going so far as to spew Nazi hate speech — all while censoring dissent.

Zuckerberg’s Meta platforms and Musk’s X have also been accused of deprioritizing external links to keep people on their apps, a move that can lead to a bounty of bad effects: pushing people toward doomscrolling, robbing readers of context beyond what fits on a social media post, and stifling traffic to news outlets.

Next on the Forbes list is Jeff Bezos, who purchased The Washington Post and has proceeded to run it into the ground ever since. Most recently, the outlet rolled out error-riddled AI-generated podcasts, despite internal documentation of editorial issues, including fabricated or misattributed quotes. The Washington Post also reportedly plans to use AI to edit columns submitted by “nonprofessionals.”

Just after Bezos on the Forbes list of richest people in the U.S. are Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. While they no longer are in positions of leadership at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, they still hold controlling stock shares in it. For years, Google has used its opaque algorithm to shuffle the audience of the world’s biggest search engine to a

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